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Substance Registry Services (SRS)

The Substance Registry Services (SRS) is the authoritative resource for basic information about chemicals, biological organisms, and other substances of interest to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its state and tribal partners. It is a one-stop repository that identifies the substances that are tracked or regulated at EPA and the different names used for each substance.

Purpose of SRS

EPA created the SRS to improve the data quality of substance identification at EPA and its partners and to facilitate the discovery of substance data held by EPA programs.

For each of the approximately 100,000 substances registered in the SRS, there is a separate SRS record. Each record contains standardized identifiers as required by the two data standards for chemicals and biological organisms that were developed for EPA and its state and tribal partners. For chemicals, these standardized identifiers include the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Number, the molecular weight, and the EPA standard name. For biological organisms, standardized identifiers include the Taxonomic Serial Number (TSN) and the taxonomic name.

Each record also holds other metadata to help identify a substance and to improve knowledge about that substance, including retired CAS numbers, synonyms, an assessment of the quality of those synonyms, and program specific identifiers for substances.

Substances

Substances, particularly chemicals, can have many valid synonyms. For example, toluene, methyl benzene, and phenyl methane, are commonly used names for the same chemical. EPA programs collect environmental data for this chemical using each of these names, plus others. This diversity leads to problems when a user is looking for programmatic data for toluene but is unaware that the data is stored under the synonym methyl benzene. Recognizing the need to catalog the Agency’s substances, the Office of Environmental Information (OEI) worked with EPA programs to obtain their substance lists, including which synonyms they use.

Each SRS record lists all synonyms used in the Agency and identifies the statutes and databases that use those synonyms. SRS thus makes it possible to determine which EPA program is tracking or regulating which substance and the synonym used by that program. There are also links to health and safety fact sheets developed internally at EPA or externally by states, other federal agencies, or international organizations. SRS is a one-stop resource that enables EPA staff, states, tribes, industry, and the public to discover where to find Agency data for a substance.

Current Activities

SRS is improving substance information management, data quality, and serving as an important component of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

• EPA program, states, and tribes are adopting the standardized SRS names for their chemicals, reducing the use of other synonyms at the Agency; and

• EPA programs, states, and tribes are accessing SRS through Web services, a technology that enables machine to machine data exchange over the Internet. For example, a state representative can submit a synonym or other information and within seconds receive the full complement of SRS data for that substance in their database. To learn about SRS Web services, visit the Automated Services tab on the SRS webpage.

• Some EPA programs are using the SRS to ensure data quality of incoming substance information. A submitter of data to an EPA program, for example, would not be able to type a substance name onto a submission to EPA. That substance must be chosen from a pick list provided by EPA. This prevents typographical mistakes or mismatched chemical names and Chemical Abstract Numbers, saving programs money from reduced data quality corrections after the data has been submitted.

• EPA programs, states, tribes, other federal agencies, international organizations, and others have created hyperlinks that take a user from their systems to the SRS to learn more about a particular substance. This functionality allows system owners to provide their users with more robust information about a substance, without having to collect and manage this information on their own WebPages. To learn about SRS Direct Link, visit the Automated Services tab on the SRS webpage.

• SRS allows users to manage their own lists of substances within SRS. OEI encourages states and tribes to manage their substance lists in SRS, enabling them to cross-walk their substances with the substances in EPA programs. As more states and tribes manage their lists in SRS, it will be possible to understand more fully how a substance is tracked or regulated across the federal, state, and tribal governments.

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SRS QUICK FACTS

▪ SRS is the authoritative registry for substances of interest to EPA.

▪ SRS contains nearly 100,000 records.

▪ SRS provides substance lists by statute, regulation, and program.

▪ SRS provides links to related regulatory information within EPA and other federal agencies and states.

▪ SRS identifies the standardized nomenclature and other information for each chemical.

▪ .

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OFFICE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION

Accessing SRS

SRS on Internet:

• srs

Includes select login for EPA & partners to the Extranet site

[pic]

MARCH 2010

OFFICE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION

For More Information

John Harman

Data Standards Program

harman.john@

202 566 0748

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